Monarchy and political collaboration in John Heywood's The Play of the Weather

Abstract

John Heywood's The Play of the Weather (1533) reflects the dynamic complexity of early Tudor political thought. This article intervenes in critical debates by challenging the tendency to reduce the play's politics to Catholic conservatism. While prior scholarship frames the text as reconciling court factions, satirising absolutism, or dramatising governance, it often anchors Heywood's thought in his Catholic identity. Instead, this article argues that Heywood, as a Tudor humanist, reconstructs monarchical legitimacy not through papalism but by fusing the medieval ‘king under law’ tradition with a humanist emphasis on civic virtue.